New features in version 2.10

Apps & Clients
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FYI: For anyone using Mobile Phone for Presence on Android only!

So I was part of the Account Migration Beta program (a month ago) and as part of that Beta, I had updated my SmartThings Mobile App to version 2.10 (it was coincidentally released at the same time as the beta).

Anyway, as someone who had never had an issue with their Mobile Presence in SmartThings, my mobile presence stopped reporting, period. So after trials and tribulations, I eventually deleted my Mobile Phone from SmartThings and then added it back in. The problem was solved by doing this and my mobile presence began working again without a single issue.

So with that, I didn’t chalk it up to any one cause as the issue. It is now in the past. Or so I thought.

That’s is until Friday of last week. My Motorola Z Force had a radio failure. I could no longer get WIFI to turn on. Even Factory Reset my phone. Nightmare, not so much, but definitely an inconvenience (everything, apps, contacts, photos, etc backed up). So I was shipped a new phone 24 hours later.

After restoring everything to this new phone and reinstalling the SmartThings Application on my phone, I had to run some errands and realized that I didn’t receive a notification that zForce had left and my ST didn’t Arm. Anyway, I began troubleshooting this in depth when I got home:

  • Looked at Mobile Phone in IDE - Showed INACTIVE (guess this would be accurate considering old phone was factory reset and powered off)
  • Went into ST mobile app and moved my Geofence about 10 miles away. Saved
  • Turned logging on, looked at Recently. The device shows Last reported date of the 14th. The last time I arrived home

So what I did was goto the Market Place and add Mobile presence again. Now the way this works, is if you have already added your Mobile device to SmartThings, you will receive an error stating that it already exists (if device is identical).

Now because this is a new phone, it has a different mac address, etc and when adding whatever device fields are read in, I’m assuming the uuid that gets inserted into Network ID are based from the phone itself, being able to add the new phone was expected.

After adding this new phone into ST, I then named it similar to the existing oh one in ST. I then looked at old phone in Things and went to Smart Apps tab. I removed the old phone and added new phone to every instance right there in the Smart Apps tab.

  • Looking at this in hindsight now and what I wish I had tried first was taking the UUID from the Network ID in IDE given to the New phone and copied/pasted into Network ID of existing phone, and then immediately deleting the new phone from ST. Hindsight is 20/20 and lack of sleep and beers.
    Anyway, moving forward:

After performing the steps above and getting all Routines and SmartApps updated and reflective of the new device, I did the following:

  • Went into Geofence and moved it 10 miles away and saved
  • This did not result in the phone reporting that I had left
  • So I took a drive about 15 miles away.
  • Still didn’t report anything or change the device status.
  • I gave up and went to sleep or passed out depending on how you look at it.
  • Fired up coffee, sat down and opened ST and first thing I did was move the Geofence 10 miles away.
  • Ding ding ding! zForce has left Lake House!
  • Set Geofence back to default location
  • Ding Ding Ding! zForce arrived at Lake House!

Why this took so much time to report, I have no idea, but I’m going to say patience plays a key role. Anyway, I left the house and everything Armed appropriately. Got two blocks away from the house and everything Disarmed and garage opened as expected.

Because of so many issues across the board reported everywhere over a very long period of time, I wanted to give a very detailed description of my 2 situations and maybe this helps others that experience the same thing in resolving rather than screaming and yelling at ST:

Troubleshooting Steps:

Existing phone:

  1. You are running Android
  2. You have always had reliable Mobile presence
  3. You upgraded to 2.10 or 2.10.1 of the ST Mobile app
  4. Mobile Presence stopped reporting period

Steps:

  1. Goto Geofence setting/map in ST App
  2. Move perimeter 10 or more miles away from your actual location and Save it until you come back to Dashboard page.
  3. Wait a minute (this depends on notification settings you have for the Mobile Presence (mine is set at one minute). If you receive notification (if you have it turned on for device, or if you goto to things and see if it sets your phone to Away, then you are golden.
  4. If above was successful, then go back into Geofence settings and press the button in the map that resets the perimeter to your current location (lol obviously do this while you are home) and Save. You should be good to go now. Goodbye!
  5. If it still doesn’t report, goto Market Place and try to add the phone again. It should error on you as this is a duplicate device.
  6. If it does allow you to add it, follow step 3 down under New phone below
  7. If you do receive the error, I believe that you will need to Remove the current phone (take a snapshot of everything you have the current device added to before deleting).
  8. Once you delete the phone, go back to Market Place and add it again. Immediately repeat the steps for the Geofence procedure steps 1-4.
  9. If it doesn’t report, exit out of ST and wait a couple of hours and perform it again (this the patience part)

New phone:

  1. Do not delete your old phone
  2. Goto Market Place and add your new phone from Things / Sensors.
  3. Login to IDE and copy the Network ID from new phone
  4. Paste Network ID into current/old phone and save/update.
  5. Delete the New Phone added. ( You may have to copy the Network device to notepad or somewhere else first, delete this device and then update the existing one with that Network ID as I didn’t get to try this procedure as it was an after thought)
  6. Go into the ST Mobile app
  7. Repeat Geofence steps 1-4 above Under existing Phone instructions up above.
  8. If the device doesn’t Notify or show as Away after a minute or two, wait a couple of hours and try again.
  9. If this doesn’t work, then change the Network ID you just pasted to 123456 or something else other than what the new phone was.
  10. Then go back into Market Place and add the New Phone again.
  11. Follow the procedure I documented in my summary up top about going into the SmartApps tab under Things of your old/current phone and add new phone and remove old phone from every Routine and Smart App.
  12. Then Delete old phone
  13. Repeat procedures for Geofence again and if it doesn’t immediately report wait a couple of hours and try again.

Sorry for the lengthy book. Just wanted to be able to help someone out step by step to save them from as much pain as possible.

One thing I forgot to add the other day. If the Geofence perimeter for your location (the blue circle around your home location) is too small, mobile presence will not work reliably. Most people probably have the default size set or tried to make it an even much smaller perimeter. If you are having issues, I would try making this the size of a silver dollar and save and then test moving the perimeter away from the current location and save. If mobile presence is going to work, it will work from performing the steps to test by moving the perimeter. If you can’t get it to work from the Geofence location settings there are different issues.

The End